Excitement of move for Booth tempered by leaving behind South Yorkshire roots

The team he started from his Rotherham garage more than two decades ago has outgrown its roots and is bound for the motor sport heartland of the South Midlands.

The Manor Motorsport marque with whom Booth dared to dream became his vehicle into the fast lane in the guise of Virgin Racing.

Next year, the team he built will enter its third season in Formula 1 as the Russian-backed Marussia Racing from their new home in Banbury, Oxfordshire.

Booth remains team principal, director of racing and jack of all trades, but the severing of roots for a proud Yorkshireman has tempered the excitement as they hurtle towards the next chapter.

“It’s been an absolutely fantastic journey and that’s the hardest thing, leaving South Yorkshire, the personal sacrifice,” said the 55-year-old.

“It’s hard to escape the feeling that we have let people down.

“We had such a strong backing and fantastic local support. I feel like we are letting them down.

“The feeling right now is two-fold; I leave with a heavy heart but I’m excited about the future.”

From inception to departure, Booth has been at the centre of everything as Yorkshire became accustomed to the novelty of being home to a Formula 1 team.

It all began in a room with Graham Lowdon and Nick Wirth in the Spring of 2009, when the wheels were set in motion on Booth’s F1 dream.

A Formula Renault and Formula 3 stalwart, he had helped Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen towards the millionaires’ playground and now wanted a piece for himself.

Bit by bit the idea grew until in June, Manor GP were the surprise addition to the grid for the following 2010 season.

As Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin empire added gravitas to the team, the base began to develop in the old pit village of Dinnington, Rotherham.

Modest by McLaren standards, it was still a home Booth was proud of as it more-than doubled in size to house the nuts and bolts of a Formula 1 team.

But as the team has grown and the influence from Russian stakeholders Marussia has increased, so the necessity to base themselves closer to their new technical partners McLaren in Surrey became apparent.

When Booth revealed at a glitzy launch of their 2011 car in London that when in the distant future a Virgin driver reached the podium it would be a Russian flag that was raised in recognition, the penny dropped that Formula 1 was not long for this county.

And now, not only is the work-force – a lot of them Yorkshire-bred mechanics – moving to Oxfordshire, but also the whole Booth family; lock, stock and two smoking engines.

“It has been everything I thought it would be,” Booth said of his F1 odyssey.

“It’s been a fantastic journey. It has consumed the whole family. My wife Mary and both my girls work for us and they’re forever on call.

“It’s unfortunate that we have to move but it’s for the good of the team.

“We have been working hard to transform the Dinnington site.

“It’s going to be a technical centre to be used for the training of mechanics, management, F1 PR and marketing.

“We want people from all over South Yorkshire and the UK to utilise it.

“We have been working hard on it for four to five months.

“It’s a good building, a lot of memories, and it would be a shame not to use it.

“The whole experience has been a bit of a rollercoaster.

“We are a 200-strong company now, and by January that will be 212 with the extra people coming into the HR and Health and Safety departments.

“When you look back, it all started with three of us around a desk in that first meeting in Dinnington.

“We have done well to grow in tough financial times and we are grateful to all who have sponsored us.

“I still pinch myself at times.

“I left Dinnington School at 15 and I flew to Sao Paulo this week on business class.”

That trip was for this weekend’s Brazilian Grand Prix, the 19th and final stop of the 2011 season.

Marussia Virgin Racing’s second year in F1 has been one of regression.

In motor racing parlance, they have been caught with the handbrake on.

“Turkey was the turning point, it was almost like throwing away all that we had done in the previous 18 months,” Booth reflected on a year when his team were sucked towards backmarkers HRT rather than propelled towards the mdifield teams.

“We were promised a big performance upgrade that would help us make a big step forward in Turkey, but it never materialised.

“That was when the decision was taken to part company with Wirth Research and from June onwards we have been concentrating on the 2012 car.”

Virgin had £55m to spend on their Formula 1 cars for drivers Timo Glock and Jerome D’Ambrosio in 2011.

It represented a £15m increase on the budget for their debut year thanks mainly to the increased stake of Marussia.

But still, in a sport where money not so much talks as yells loudly down the home straight, it is never going to be enough to see them reach their target of being regulars in the second session of Saturday qualifying.

D’Ambrosio’s 14th place finishes in Canada and Australia were their highest returns and although they have made a habit of securing double-car finishes this year, there is no escaping the fact that it is with disappointment that Booth and his team will reflect on the past year.

“As far as reliability and team operation is concerned we have progressed as planned and as well as could be expected,” he said.

“Performance-wise, though, we haven’t, and that’s pretty obvious.

“We have optimised the package and in terms of straight-line pace we have done well. We have learned a tremendous amount.

“The gap has stayed the same to the midfield teams because they have also made progress, as you would expect.

“So we have progressed, but not at an acceptable rate. And that’s been a disappointment.”

There is promise for next year.

The partnership with McLaren allows them use of many applied technologies at a company that is widely regarded as being in pole position when it comes to F1 engineering.

Most pertinently, Booth’s team will be able to tap into wind tunnel technology that enables them to shed the controversial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) that held them back for so long.

“We’ll start to see the big influence of that next year,” said Booth. “At the minute we are still correlating the CFD results and so forth but I’m sure we’ll take a big step forward.

“We hope to see that improvement by the European season of 2012 with a significant lean towards Silverstone as the next upgrade.

“But it will probably be Barcelona and the Spanish Grand Prix (May) when the full force of the McLaren work will be obvious.”

Changes in the paddock are also in the offing. Renowned Renault engineer Pat Symonds has been working in a consultancy capacity and is expected to come into a role in 2013 when his ban for his part in the ‘Crashgate’ scandal is served.

The dropping of Virgin from the name reflects the size of Marussia’s stakehold in the company, although Branson is expected to appear at a handful of races.

And as Booth states: “Richard has been a very important part of our development and we are lucky to have him.”

Booth himself will remain central.

The team principal part of his duties may one day be passed over; the largely commercial facet of that role is something he has never wholeheartedly embraced.

His long-term future is likely to be as director of racing; on the pitlane, where he belongs, where he thrives, still with the same enthusiasm he exuded when he first launched his team in 1990, and when he first envisaged Yorkshire as home to a Formula 1 team.